Horsetooth Hybrid Grappling Club

With folkstyle season winding down, we wanted to share this video mash-up as a reminder of why we at Horsetooth believe that this style of wrestling–along with its predecessor, catch-as-catch-can (think collegiate wrestling with submissions)–is the most effective martial art.

No doubt the initial video shows our biases–we are indeed huge fans of John Smith, both for his accomplishments as a competitor and his incredible wealth of knowledge and passion as a coach.

What really caught our eye, though, is Coach Smith jokingly hitting an armbar on his young athlete as a reminder to keep one’s limbs away from attack (even if you’re competing in a combat sport that doesn’t allow ‘potentially dangerous’ tactics, like folkstyle–consider your straightened arms and legs as levers to control shoulder and hip lines, respectively!).

Overall, though, Coach Smith is demonstrating to other coaches how to escape a really bad position on the bottom, which in this case occurs from a breakdown of a leg ride.

So what makes folkstyle superior to other martial arts, including its more popular grappling contemporaries (as Jocko himself seems to allude to)?

For us, it comes down to…

TAKEDOWNS–BREAKDOWNS–TURNS

Notice we haven’t included ‘submissions’ in the triumvirate above 🙂. We’ll post more about this, but briefly, we believe submissions can represent a type of ‘fool’s gold’ if the three concepts above are not first adequately mastered.

Hope to see you on the mats soon!

#catchwrestling #folkstyle #focomartialarts #focowrestling #focograppling #horsetoothgrappling